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“We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

imdb.com

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Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#181

Post by Cthulhu_ »

erickhill wrote: post #128
exodust wrote: post #42

Thumbs down to whoever decided to close the boards. I'll miss being able to argue about why a movie is rubbish with someone who thinks it's fantastic, or vice-versa. There's some great discussions on some of the movie boards where people talk about the stories and motivations of characters etc. Sure it gets heated sometimes, but that's life. You just navigate around that stuff and find things worth responding to. Sen…

The cost to moderate the boards is probably not insignificant. The revenue they provided (directly) I'm sure made the decision pretty easy to make when looking at it only through the lens of a cold spreadsheet.

I find that weird though; message boards generate a lot of pageviews and are generally rich in content, so they would also generate a lot of advertising revenue.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#182

Post by intopieces »

jl6 wrote: post #139
intopieces wrote: post #113

Eh. They were mostly people starting threads with the title "This movie sucks." Not much valuable discussion there.

The signal to noise ratio was poor, but there was some signal. It would be a tragedy for it to be deleted.

I think tragedy is going a bit too far. Unfortunate for some hardcore fans, sure, but some things are just not worth keeping around and most of those things are message boards.

It's time to admit that message boards, as a genre of open-web feature, are a failure without clear topics and strict codes of conduct.

IMBd's boards had neither, and I'm glad to see them go.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#183

Post by dwaltrip »

robbrown451 wrote: post #174

It amazes me that no one has yet been able to build a self moderating message board that uses a combination of crowd sourcing and machine learning to lower the volumes of the microphones of bad actors. (while balancing it against the general concept of freedom of expression) Hacker News is one of the better ones out there, but I think it comes more from having a smallish community and active moderation from above. Qu…

One big problem is "garbage in, garbage out". How do we ensure the auto-moderators are trained well? Especially given the effort and cleverness certain destructive individuals are willing to expend?

The community sets the tone and norms, but it is a dynamic, evolving thing, and I think it would be incredibly difficult to robustly formalize in a system that doesn't possess human level intelligence.

Additionally, almost all online communities see a decrease in signal-to-noise ratio as they grow. I think this is one reason reddit has been so successful with their sub-reddit concept, so that groups can splinter off, reformulate their main principles, and start anew.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#184

Post by exodust »

riffic wrote: post #179
exodust wrote: post #42

Thumbs down to whoever decided to close the boards. I'll miss being able to argue about why a movie is rubbish with someone who thinks it's fantastic, or vice-versa. There's some great discussions on some of the movie boards where people talk about the stories and motivations of characters etc. Sure it gets heated sometimes, but that's life. You just navigate around that stuff and find things worth responding to. Sen…

Thumbs down to whoever decided to close the boards. I'll miss being able to argue about why a movie is rubbish with someone who thinks it's fantastic, or vice-versa. This would be a great opportunity for you to start your own film community then.

Not a sensible remark. Making a huge network of message boards attached to a major database of film, TV, actors and crew is not exactly something anyone can just throw together in their downtime.

"Hey IMDB fans, good news I've installed a PHP message board on some shared web hosting where you can continue the discussion". Errr.. no. That's not gonna cut it.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#185

Post by brianwawok »

anigbrowl wrote: post #165
bluedino wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is it's due to a very small amount of trolls that did a lot of damage. I can't help but be disgusted that these guys are now laughing about IMDB shutting the whole thing down because of their actions.

Well, it's time to come up with a better solution than 'don't feed the trolls.' I have been saying for years that trolling (the aggressive kind, not the witty mutual banter kind) is a serious problem and the response is almost always 'oh just don't give them attention, that's what they feed on blah blah.' this ignores the fact that trolls and bullies systematically pick on people who are vulnerable and target their s…

Real ID helps but no one wants that.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#186

Post by detaro »

brianwawok wrote: post #185
anigbrowl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's time to come up with a better solution than 'don't feed the trolls.' I have been saying for years that trolling (the aggressive kind, not the witty mutual banter kind) is a serious problem and the response is almost always 'oh just don't give them attention, that's what they feed on blah blah.' this ignores the fact that trolls and bullies systematically pick on people who are vulnerable and target their s…

Real ID helps but no one wants that.

Looking at the Facebook comment sections some news sites include, I'm not convinced it actually helps.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#187

Post by JoeDaDude »

djsumdog wrote: post #144
chippy wrote: post #74

This is pretty bad move and here's why: IMDb relies on users using the site, editing entries, facts, quotes and correcting things. These are the community, and they are movie fans, hardcore fans, the reason why IMDb continues. The "db" in IMDb has been created, by hand, by volunteers - the users who use the message board. IMDb has totally overlooked the value of the Message Boards - they are for the community. Remove…

Only time will tell if this is a good or bad decision. I bet they crunched the numbers and felt that they could save money by no longer needing to maintain a moderation staff, or potentially move that staff to more important projects.

Judging by the flame wars I've seen on IMDB, their moderation staff is small to non-existent.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#188

Post by forgottenpass »

anigbrowl wrote: post #165
bluedino wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is it's due to a very small amount of trolls that did a lot of damage. I can't help but be disgusted that these guys are now laughing about IMDB shutting the whole thing down because of their actions.

Well, it's time to come up with a better solution than 'don't feed the trolls.' I have been saying for years that trolling (the aggressive kind, not the witty mutual banter kind) is a serious problem and the response is almost always 'oh just don't give them attention, that's what they feed on blah blah.' this ignores the fact that trolls and bullies systematically pick on people who are vulnerable and target their s…

> Telling people to just ignore it is equivalent to telling them that their injuries don't matter and you're not interested enough to help

No, it's equivalent to giving them a toolset to make many attempts at injuring them unsuccessful.

I'll be the first to admit that "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a porous filter. But removing it because it's not perfect only makes people more vulnerable. Rather than finding a way to address things that make it through that first-pass filter, now the new solution has to fix everything at once. (As we've seen, you've already established that partial fixes are unacceptable.) Good luck finding a solution.

> Telling people to just ignore [...] is an implicit endorsement of the idea that aggressively trolling other people is basically acceptable.

Telling someone that life involves exposure to things they might not like and they're going to have to find ways to deal with it, is in no way an endorsement of those things. All it is, is not coddling.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#189

Post by cloakandswagger »

madgar wrote: post #176
degenerate wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be like Y Combinator shutting down its "message board", citing " Increasingly, Y Combinator customers have migrated to Reddit "

If hacker news doesn't stem the growth of trolling (which has pushed out plenty of my friends) then it probably will eventually "shut down" new signups for a while.

Odd, I don't see a lot of blatant trolling on HN at all. Care to name some examples?

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#190

Post by JoeDaDude »

r721 wrote: post #109

Interesting comment on reddit (by Manhattan_Writer): "This is no surprise whatsoever. I've worked at IMDb (the worst and most discouraging experience of my professional life ) and believe me, the company is a soulless, empty corporate shell that has one goal: to sell advertising. It's not about movies, TV, or being 'guardians of data' - everything is about making money. The entire site is setup to sell advertising, a…

But without the message boards, I (and many others) have no reason to visit the site. I expect this will have an indirect effect on page views and advertising sales.
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